Laboratory of Living Matter and Center for Physics and Biology, Rockefeller University, New York, New York, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2007 Jul 25;2(7):e663. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000663.
Many studies involving interacting microorganisms would benefit from simple devices able to deposit cells in precisely defined patterns. We describe an inexpensive bacterial piezoelectric inkjet printer (adapted from the design of the POSaM oligonucleotide microarrayer) that can be used to "print out" different strains of bacteria or chemicals in small droplets onto a flat surface at high resolution. The capabilities of this device are demonstrated by printing ordered arrays comprising two bacterial strains labeled with different fluorescent proteins. We also characterized several properties of this piezoelectric printer, such as the droplet volume (of the order of tens of pl), the distribution of number of cells in each droplet, and the dependence of droplet volume on printing frequency. We established the limits of the printing resolution, and determined that the printed viability of Escherichia coli exceeded 98.5%.
许多涉及相互作用的微生物的研究将受益于能够将细胞精确地沉积在特定模式中的简单设备。我们描述了一种廉价的细菌压电喷墨打印机（改编自 POSaM 寡核苷酸微阵列仪的设计），它可以将不同的细菌菌株或化学物质以小液滴的形式“打印”到平面上，具有高分辨率。该设备的功能通过打印由两种带有不同荧光蛋白的细菌菌株标记的有序阵列来证明。我们还对这种压电打印机的几个特性进行了表征，例如液滴体积（数十皮升）、每个液滴中细胞数量的分布，以及液滴体积对打印频率的依赖性。我们确定了打印分辨率的限制，并确定打印的大肠杆菌活力超过 98.5%。
